


Amabilmente Terribile

by Cryon



Category: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: (in the first chapter if you haven't played the mobage's 8th chapter), Angst, Character Study, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, Not So Subtle Flirting, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24188314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryon/pseuds/Cryon
Summary: Two entirely different perspectives on what a relationship involving blondes who occasionally speak Italian might entail.
Relationships: Azusa Mifuyu/Alina Gray, Nanami Yachiyo/Tomoe Mami
Kudos: 12





	1. Trasparente

**Author's Note:**

> I realized too late that I, an Italian, completely forgot to include any Italian whatsoever in the first of these two pieces. The second one, to come whenever my fingers'll cooperate, will be a decidedly less sweet piece involving Mifuyu and another blonde who will, hopefully, remember to reach the allotted quota of minimum Italian-per-fic.

“It’s quiet.”

Unusually so. Enough to remark on it out loud. And for a brow to furrow, raining puzzlement with a tinge of worry on the hazel puddles below.

“I’m sorry, Yachiyo-san. I didn’t mean to let our conversation trail off...”

A blink. The same expression, now reflected in both pairs of eyes. Realization bloomed on Yachiyo’s face first, a soft dandelion dancing in the wind - her shaking head.

“No, no, I wasn’t blaming you, Tomoe-san. On the contrary, I--” Didn’t finish her sentence. She couldn’t, not with the pressure of a pout bearing down on her. Finding herself quietly berated like that, Yachiyo hesitated. Her lips soon stopped lingering half-open, coming together as they spread into a smile.

“Mami-san.”

The dandelion’s seeds, a mere few syllables, drifted along the breeze. They found fertile soil on Mami’s visage, where they soon grew into a smile of their own. Satisfied, she rewarded herself with a sip from her cup, filled to the brim with a brew as warm as her newfound ease.

“So, you were saying?”

A refined display, a childish reaction. Yachiyo found the dichotomy refreshingly amusing to bear.

“The house. I’ve gotten so used to the usual ruckus that I had almost forgotten what it feels like.”   
“Silence?”   
A small nod. “The space, too. So, so much space...” Half-lid eyes drifting across the sunlit furniture. “The emptiness of it. How easily it ends up filled with nothing but solitude.”

Mami studied the brief meeting between the other girl’s lips and her cup. A soundless sip. Behind the hand Yachiyo was using to support her chin, the pale skin of her throat moved like waves while chamomile poured down. The cup sat back on its colorful coaster, next to the slender arm perched on the table’s cold, lucid surface. Mami’s crossed legs shuffled positions, letting the chair’s creaky noise be her indirect call for attention.

“I can assure you, solitude finds a spot even in the most cramped of places.” She imparted her wisdom in the same fashion she always did. With a smiling expression that would have come across as condescending, hadn’t it been for its sincerity. It was usually followed by lavish praise and words of gratitude for her sagely wisdom - by people other than Yachiyo, a decidedly unusual kind of person.

“Your apartment isn’t  _ that _ cramped, Mami-san.”

A precise, pinpoint strike. It penetrated Mami’s defenses with disarming ease, prying her eyes open and causing them to bleed surprise in uncontrollable sprays. With a huff, her arms rushed to fold together in a futile attempt to put up some semblance of defense. A bemused Yachiyo waited, already savoring the fruit of her offensive.

“Yachiyo-san. Why do you assume I was talking about myself?”   
“Weren’t you?”

They silently gauged one another, indignancy versus merry defiance. In the end, it was Mami who admitted her defeat with a mirthful laughter, joined in by her dear adversary.

“Touché. As always, there’s no point trying to hide anything from you.”

A moment passed, spent refilling their cups and basking in the cheerier atmosphere.

“Sorry,” quietly murmured Yachiyo. Her smile grew slightly bashful when she saw Mami waiting - with blissful, perhaps exaggerated ignorance - for her to elaborate. “For souring the mood out of nowhere and teasing you when you were trying to lighten it up.”   
“I don’t mind either… well, maybe I resent the latter a bit.” She immediately gave a dismissive gesture, adding a warm giggle for good measure to melt away the worries that were already beginning to solidify on Yachiyo’s face. “I’m joking, naturally. I appreciate your frankness, Yachiyo-san. It’s what makes our conversations so pleasant.”

Relief washed over Yachiyo, a delightful sight. Because it - along with the worry which had preceded it, however sadistic a veneer this thought gave to her private feeling - told Mami the young woman genuinely cared. In a way that transcended vapid formalities, a barefaced honesty resulted from the unique beginnings of their friendship. It couldn’t have been, nor would she have had it any other way.

“Well, at the very least, I hope the feeling is mutual…?”

Her head was hung slightly low, but rather than peering into the cup, Mami’s eyes were glancing furtively into Yachiyo’s. Waiting, expectantly. Not for long. An apologetic pair of smiling lips gave her the answer they were about to spell out.

“I must have been doing a terrible job of showing as much.”   
“Or maybe it was me who did a wonderful job of misunderstanding you earlier, thinking you prefer the company of your friends to mine.”

The comment made Yachiyo tilt her head.

“You make it sound like you aren’t my friend, Mami-san.”

Mami could have made the argument that, unlike her, actual friends probably didn’t entertain the thought of exploring the inside of Yachiyo’s mouth with their tongue whenever they spoke together (and just as often when apart, for that matter).

She bid her time instead. Adjusting a strand of hair that had never gone astray in the first place; letting a half-lidded gaze linger on its quivering reflection in the tea’s surface; holding the conversation hostage in the vise of a smile so innocent it couldn’t help betraying a hint of mischief.

Stalling, in a calculated, impatient bid to assert control over the flowing tide.

“Am I, Yachiyo-san? ‘Just another one of your friends’? You’ll agree with me that it can’t be that simple. Not when you consider how unorthodox the circumstances that brought us close were.”

They both knew well what she was referring to without the need for further explanations. No half-measures. It was a bullseye befitting of her, shot with brutal honesty and bereft of remorse. Her tone had been no less delicate than the flavor submerging her tongue, as refined as the cup from above which she was studying her target’s reaction. She wasn’t surprised to find guilt clinging to Yachiyo’s features. Hers was a visage that lent itself too easily to welcoming that kind of emotion. It fit neatly, just like it did in the scope of Mami’s predictions.

“Of course. I was wondering when we would finally address that.”

Always skirting around, never daring to approach it. The bridge connecting them, the imposing wall keeping them apart. Yachiyo steeled herself as she spoke - with relief, or fear? Neither she nor Mami could tell for sure. The former tormented her warm cup in her grip. The latter brought hers down with barely a noise made.

“I never did apologize properly, after all.”   
“For saving my life? You must be in the mood for unwarranted apologies today.”   
“Even so!” Yachiyo’s voice came out loud, jumping off a bitten lip. “The feelings you’d been trying to keep secret. All the thoughts hidden inside your heart, I saw them…!”   
“And for that, Yachiyo-san, I am sincerely grateful.”

Self-flagellating frustration gave way to confusion. Turmoil had taken over Yachiyo as if her face was the surface of a lake into which Mami had dived with tranquil finesse.

“How do you think I felt, when I realized my innermost truths had been revealed to a complete stranger? Ashamed? Embarrassed?” Mami shook her head before the other girl could be allowed a reaction, much less a response of any kind. “I felt liberated, and I’m not talking about being freed from the Rumor. From the moment you witnessed my true self, you destroyed the need for me to try and put up any pretense.”

A warm afterglow shone through the windows, unmatched by that of Mami’s visage as she fondly basked in the vivid recollections of her lowest point. Her precious rebirth. And the one who had gifted it to her.

“You understand it well, don’t you? The burden of being looked up to. The responsibility of never betraying the expectations of those dear people who look up to you.”

Yachiyo was looking down. At Mami’s hands, their kind grasp around hers. She was staring quietly at the flesh of fingers made lean by countless trigger pressures, amazed by the lightness with which the same digits could caress her skin. She stared, unaware her smile was just as soft.

“With this sort of insight, it’s no wonder you’d be a role model for other girls.”   
“For other girls.” Mami echoed, nodding. “But not for you. Nor you for me. That sort of relationship does not suit us.”   
“Mhmh. What about friendship then?”

A question asked with the diligence of an attentive student, almost as if immediately contradicting the previous dismissal. Yachiyo’s curiosity had been caught in the whirlpool of Mami’s exposed thoughts, feeding it, urging it to devour her whole.

“It could have been. But the way it began was far too abnormal.”   
“Magical girls are hardly normal to begin with.”

Yachiyo’s thumbs moved ever so slightly. Enough to intertwine with Mami’s, dancing together in a lazy exchange of caresses. Spontaneous, movements spurred by something beyond reason. They let it happen, an insignificant little compliance with their private admissions, the strange bond they couldn’t share with others. The freedom of abandoning oneself to impulse rather than withstanding the yoke of common conventions.

“That is true. I used to hate that abnormality. But not anymore.”

A bold claim. Yachiyo’s widened eyes told Mami so. Unfazed, she broke their grasp with deliberate leisure, turning it into the last of their shared strokes, to cross her fingers and rest her chin upon them.

“We wouldn’t be able to lay our feelings bare for each other after all, if it weren’t for the abnormality of our circumstances.”   
“Mmh. So what you’re saying is that I was worth the hassle of being turned into a magical girl?”

Mami’s chuckle was a light one. Yachiyo wasn’t late to follow, after her elbows had found the table again to mimic the other girl’s pose across from it. Their laughter filled the room, it mingled in the physical space separating them.

“I am.”

The laughs ceased one-sidedly at first. The sudden response stole the breath necessary to fuel the other girl’s, leaving her lips hanging with nothing but an empty void in-between. Mami continued, in spite of the non-existent risk of Yachiyo awakening from her stupor to interrupt her.

“We’re bound by mutual honesty, but we’re also similar in many regards. No, perhaps  _ that _ is why we can be so honest with each other. And so I know that, while you genuinely care for your friends, there is also an insurmountable barrier between you - the same separating a part of myself from my own friends. The facet you were the first, and likely the last, to discover, Yachiyo.”

She shuddered. More than from the direction taken by Mami’s speech, the formality shaved away from her name’s pronunciation, the depth of the gaze boring into her very soul, it was the sensation of something touching her bare leg that almost made Yachiyo jump from her seat.

Smooth fabric, and the pressure of what it covered like a second skin.

It would have been easy to dismiss. But the table, however wide, put too much of a distance between them to believe it a mistake. There was nothing casual and everything intentional about a foot lingering against a shin well past the point where a pair of crossed legs could have shuffled positions.

Yet Mami kept smiling and talking, while her eyes kept dancing between Yachiyo’s attempt at hiding her flustered face behind a veneer of composure, and the throat attempting to swallow saliva despite the dryness of her mouth. Up, down, up, down again. Like the extremity rubbing her leg, as jarringly casual as the words coming from the same source.

“We are not friends. I don’t want our connection to be so limiting. We are each other’s reprieve - from friends, from the world, from our duties. Our relationship has no need for goalposts or milestones that we already skipped at the outset. I want to see how far something as extraordinary as this will lead us...”

She leaned forward, placing her hands on the table. Palms down, begging, demanding, waiting. The caress beneath the wooden surface had reached Yachiyo’s knee, overlapping with the hem of her dress’ skirt.

“I want to see you for what you are, like you did with me. Your weakness, your ugliness, the worst part of yourself you cannot bear. I want to accept all of you just as you’ve accepted all of me. Will you let me, Yachiyo?”

“Mami...sa-”

Yachiyo saw her own face, cradled inside Mami’s eyes. She expected to find hesitation in it, the flabbergasted expression of someone unsure to deal with the absurdity of the development she’d found herself in the midst of.

An abnormal, tranquil moment shared in the intimate loneliness of a quiet afternoon.

"...Mami."

Yachiyo kept gazing at the reflection of her own smile. A kind ever so slightly different from any she could remember herself having ever shown. Bereft of reason, as if she were sleeping with her eyes closed, lost in the throes of an oddly pleasant dream. She entrusted her fingers to the ones intertwining with them, letting them pull her fully into that little, sinful slice of escapism.


	2. Opaca

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I actually remembered the Italian this time.

It’s quiet.

Unusually so. It’s what I used to think, anyway. Back when I thought I had her figured out. When the image of Alina Gray I had constructed in my mind was still little more than a paper doll: a flat, floaty thing, covered all over in pastel scribbles less meaningful than the white silhouette they soiled. Empty smiles, nonsensical words, a vapid randomness.

I found comfort in that sickening predictability. In the hubris of thinking I had found a sorrier mess than myself to take care of. As if I could allow myself to live the distorted echo of the very life I’d tossed away. An illusory, miserable happiness for my former self to cling on, let it survive until the day of that promised liberation. I thought it would be fine. That, if I could hold up the masquerade for long enough, I’d eventually become able to forget about the wretched pettiness of it.

Here I lie now, a naked canvas draped across candid sheets. Watching, as Alina silently turns me into a grotesque monument to her artistic ideals.

It was when I first gazed on her focused, ungrinning face that I realized. The purpose I’d lost, the role she had so effortlessly denied. I thought I’d made the choice to offer myself in service of her craft, when in fact there was no choice at all. To begin with, hers hadn’t been a question, but a statement: of what I would become, of what I had always been. I couldn’t say no to the truth, even one I had yet to fully realize.

She conveys it with dexterous obviousness, like when she traces the contour of my spine with her brush. The bristles begin their journey on the tiny bump below my nape, with a gentle firmness I used to believe too delicate for the hand holding that tool. It makes its descent in a slow, unbroken caress that leaves behind a tingly dampness, and a shivering trail of color. From the corner of my eye, I can spot it: a bright vermillion, born from the seemingly endless reserves of corpse paint in Alina’s possession. The steadily growing stroke pulsates like a freshly opened gash, with such a lively color my skin’s paleness looks almost sickly by comparison. As if I was a corpse myself, and Alina the saint bestowing it the gift of life by dint of an elegant miracle.

A sickening, beautiful contradiction. From that single line, a mere seed that has yet to even fully blossom, the differences between us make themselves manifest, copious and irrefutable. She creates, in the same vein she lives: with effortless, spontaneous genuinity, bleeding her self over anything and anybody. Filled to the brim with such purpose that no façade could ever hope to hide nor contain it.

It was only natural that an individual like Alina would find in me, her diametral opposite, a perfect canvas.

The brush persists in its voyage across my body, eventually approaching the rift where my flesh parts between my hips. Her wrist, undaunted by this juncture, proceeds unflinching: her choice is made without agonizing over it. What I used to mistake for brashness I now recognize for what it is - a self-assuredness made possible only for one with a firm grasp of the thoughts governing her every decision, her life itself. Where I would have agonized, she presses onwards, brazenly leaving her trace upon the world. I tremble, from envy and awe of her confidence. From the sensation of her brush invading the cleft between my buttocks, only for it to dance around the left one, following its curve to proceed its voyage down my thigh. Down, down it goes, and my mind along with it... slowly, inexorably losing itself to the feeling that deepens with each millimeter of increasingly sensitive skin devoured, until the moment where the brush’s nearly dry tip parts with that of my curling foot.

I wait, in the silence of my sealed lips and the darkness behind my eyelids. All the while sensing Alina’s gaze over her handiwork. My body responds to it as if her eyes were setting ablaze the line drawn on it. I try to let the heavy breaths building inside my chest dissolve into long, drawn out ones, without fully knowing why. Maybe, I do so because I’m afraid of ruining her art, and her interest in using me along with it. A normal person would probably find relief in such an outcome, especially in light of the next step I know shall soon take place…

“You’re quiet, Mifuyu.”

I open my eyes and turn my head over the folded arms I’m using in lieu of a pillow. I find Alina staring back, studying me in a fashion I would find more suited to a scientist than an artist. I don’t answer her, because I don’t want to. Nor do I need to, for that matter. Our conversations inside her atelier are nothing like the exasperated bickerings we exchange outside of its confines. Here, away from the prying eyes of others, in front of perhaps the only person to ever have truly figured me out, our thoughts can flow and mingle beyond the need for more than a few words. Just enough to leave the ensuing silences pregnant with the meanings a normal conversation couldn’t otherwise encapsulate so effectively.

So I know. Like the surprise I felt when I first bore witness to the change in her behavior when she dedicates herself to her passion, so does Alina wonder now. About the fact I used to react differently, strongly, when I began playing the role of her canvas. Her words were a question; the subtle smile that creeps up on her lips shortly afterwards, a sign that she found a satisfactory answer in my silence and diverted gaze. In her atelier we may be allowed to be honest with each other, yet here I am, still clinging to the last vestiges of my mask. Pretending that deep down I still might be a vulnerable, normal person like anybody else.

The one I am trying to fool is not Alina, but myself.

I feel her hand gripping my foot. My eyes close, refusing to admit my abandonment to her whims, but doing nothing to deny them either. A sharp pain steals a gasp from me: Alina’s teeth sink into the fragile flesh of my toe, adding pressure until she can taste the blood, and I the outline of her smile. It’s a mere prelude - a  _ taste _ of what’s to come. Alina’s irony, like everything else about her, is unashamedly cruel. The brutal embrace of her fangs relents to give way to the comforting warmth of her tongue. Nonetheless, that too is only a reflection of her malicious inspiration, a portion of her deranged artistry. Her mouth lingers, not to ease my pain, but for the sake of fostering its byproduct. For a smattering of seconds, for an aching eternity. Then her ascent begins, leaving behind a trail of blood and saliva over the bright red guideline she left for herself.

The ichor of life and the color of death. A real wound and a fake one. Alina and me. Truth and falsehood, caught in a grotesque, lascivious embrace. I let her violate my dignity without remorse, inertly welcoming her weight alongside mine on the bed while she savors the intimate blend of our selves. The springs creak and squeak, sounding like the lamenting spirits of the friends I left behind. The precious people whose fates I couldn’t shoulder, and whose atonement I seek in the tortures I willingly suffer on this bed.

My personal martyrdom… is it?

I wonder, while Alina’s tongue finally drifts off from the same bony peak where her brush’s journey had begun. What kind of revolting flavor did she taste from me? It must be the same as that of my sins, of my every weakness. I fled - from my friend, from my responsibilities - in hopes of doing away with them, of dousing them all in atonement, to eventually let the spark of liberation turn them to cinders. I tell myself it’s for this reason that I let Alina do as she pleases with me… but how do I know that this isn’t just another lie, another of countless attempts to avoid facing what I really am?

Hot air brushes my nape. A sadistic, honest smile plants a damp kiss on the same spot, then clamps on to suck the life of it, leave a tyrannical mark of ownership on the most valuable of this artist’s implements. I grit my teeth, try to keep my eyes squeezed shut as tightly as possible, to no avail. Because if I were that strong, I wouldn’t have fled. Because the edge of distinction between all the cuts and the kisses have long since blurred messily into each other.

Because when my eyelids betray me and admit an inevitable defeat, when instead of their vacuous darkness I find myself staring at my reflection in Alina’s green irises…

When I see her looking at me with a gleeful stare that seems to cry  _ “Admit it already” _ while she keeps feasting on my flesh, I realize how hopeless it would be of me to keep dreaming about redemption. Her lips finally relent with a loud smack, leaving behind a purple blemish and a burning chill whenever her breath washes over it.

“ _ Splendida _ .”

She knows. She’s always known, from the first time she set her sights on me. The things I could never dare say. The admissions I will never make, to anybody but her. She knows, because it’s my expression that lets her know. That I can feel the brush’s bristles flutter between my legs. That I will let her dye my dirty, truthful self with her corpse-born colors. Because she is not the only one using another to her own egoistic benefit. Because that, more than saving others, or saving myself… more than atoning, it is what I’m best at.

I’m sorry, Yacchan.


End file.
